ENAC Seminar Series by Dr H. Azarijafari
Event details
| Date | 04.02.2021 |
| Hour | 15:15 › 16:00 |
| Speaker | Dr Hessam Azarijafari |
| Location |
Zoom
Online
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
15:15 – 16:00 – Dr Hessam Azarijafari
Postdoctoral Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA
The Role of Pavements in a Sustainable Built Environment: It’s beyond materials
Several solutions have been proposed to mitigate the climate change impact of infrastructure systems focusing on the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of construction materials. However, the life-cycle GHG emissions and the potential savings for pavement use-phase components, such as the albedo effect and pavement-vehicle interaction, have not been fully investigated. In this presentation, the pavement life-cycle impact is discussed at project and network levels. Then, meaningful solutions are proposed to mitigate these emissions. To do so, a pavement management system model and life-cycle assessment framework were developed and incorporated to estimate the potential climate change impact of pavements and to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed solutions. Within the urban area, reflective pavement solutions are proposed in neighborhoods of two major cities: Phoenix and Boston. The project-level results show the sensitivity to and importance of context (traffic, climate, and city morphology) in the pavement life-cycle GHG emissions and expected savings from the solutions. It was found that increasing pavement reflectivity is a viable solution to lower the urban air temperature and GHG emissions in various climate conditions – offsetting 1.0-3.0% and 0.7-6.0% of the cities’ total emissions in Boston and Phoenix, respectively. On a national scale, the network-level analysis of the U.S. pavement roads shows that more than 70% of the emissions are attributed to the use phase (specifically, pavement-vehicle interactions and radiative forcing). The simultaneous implementation of the proposed solutions for reducing the embodied and use-phase of pavements can potentially reduce more than 68% of the life-cycle GHG emissions on the national scale. The investigation of these solutions under the assumptions of extreme future scenarios, considering the changing climate, can provide new insight into the resiliency and sustainability of the built environment.
Short bio:
Hessam AzariJafari is a post-doctoral associate in Concrete Sustainability Hub and Materials Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His background is construction management and engineering. As a principal investigator and researcher, he has been leading different projects on the life cycle sustainability and nexus of pavement-building-vehicle. He is a voting and advisory member of several technical committees on sustainable construction and environmental assessment, such as ISO 14082 Radiative Forcing Management, ACI 130- Concrete Sustainability and EC3: Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator. Hessam has been serving as the chair of ACI eco-concrete competition to promote and educate life cycle sustainability to undergraduate students in civil engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada. His thesis was on the development of a consequential dynamic framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of pavements in a policy-making level.
Postdoctoral Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA
The Role of Pavements in a Sustainable Built Environment: It’s beyond materials
Several solutions have been proposed to mitigate the climate change impact of infrastructure systems focusing on the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of construction materials. However, the life-cycle GHG emissions and the potential savings for pavement use-phase components, such as the albedo effect and pavement-vehicle interaction, have not been fully investigated. In this presentation, the pavement life-cycle impact is discussed at project and network levels. Then, meaningful solutions are proposed to mitigate these emissions. To do so, a pavement management system model and life-cycle assessment framework were developed and incorporated to estimate the potential climate change impact of pavements and to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed solutions. Within the urban area, reflective pavement solutions are proposed in neighborhoods of two major cities: Phoenix and Boston. The project-level results show the sensitivity to and importance of context (traffic, climate, and city morphology) in the pavement life-cycle GHG emissions and expected savings from the solutions. It was found that increasing pavement reflectivity is a viable solution to lower the urban air temperature and GHG emissions in various climate conditions – offsetting 1.0-3.0% and 0.7-6.0% of the cities’ total emissions in Boston and Phoenix, respectively. On a national scale, the network-level analysis of the U.S. pavement roads shows that more than 70% of the emissions are attributed to the use phase (specifically, pavement-vehicle interactions and radiative forcing). The simultaneous implementation of the proposed solutions for reducing the embodied and use-phase of pavements can potentially reduce more than 68% of the life-cycle GHG emissions on the national scale. The investigation of these solutions under the assumptions of extreme future scenarios, considering the changing climate, can provide new insight into the resiliency and sustainability of the built environment.
Short bio:
Hessam AzariJafari is a post-doctoral associate in Concrete Sustainability Hub and Materials Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His background is construction management and engineering. As a principal investigator and researcher, he has been leading different projects on the life cycle sustainability and nexus of pavement-building-vehicle. He is a voting and advisory member of several technical committees on sustainable construction and environmental assessment, such as ISO 14082 Radiative Forcing Management, ACI 130- Concrete Sustainability and EC3: Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator. Hessam has been serving as the chair of ACI eco-concrete competition to promote and educate life cycle sustainability to undergraduate students in civil engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada. His thesis was on the development of a consequential dynamic framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of pavements in a policy-making level.
Practical information
- General public
- Invitation required
- This event is internal
Organizer
- ENAC
Contact
- Cristina Perez